


Echoes of the Past

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Archaeology, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Magical Accidents, Post-Canon, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:26:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5463302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bran and Will have settled happily into ordinary lives, until Jane calls with news of a brewing magical catastrophe on the Isle of Wight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes of the Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harborshore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harborshore/gifts).



> I apologize for the general lack of shippiness, though I hope Bran being needed in his continuing role as the Pendragon and Will not being a recluse make up for that in part. Happy Yuletide!

The telephone rang while Will was taking advantage of a slow summer afternoon to get ahead on watch repairs. He set down his tools and glasses, careful not to jostle the open watch on the worktable, and grabbed the back room extension.

"Stanton Jewelry, Will Stanton speaking," he said. "How may I help you?"

"Will! Oh good, I was afraid I'd get your father, and I couldn't exactly leave a message with him," said a familiar, female voice, sounding slightly harried.

Will blinked. "Jane? Aren't you meant to be on a dig this month?"

"Yes, obviously, but I'm on the Isle of Wight, not in some desolate waste. We're staying at rentals in Yarmouth and the Trust got the phones hooked up last week," said Jane. "Listen, we have a problem. _Your_ sort of problem. Except I think this time we need Bran."

Will closed his eyes for a moment. Then he looked around the crowded yet tidy back half of his father's shop, anchoring himself in its warm, everyday familiarity. He'd awakened Bran's memories years ago, because Jane had been right that burying them had been a violation. But Bran felt that the Dark's banishment had more than fulfilled any duties he'd inherited, and had no patience for Jane and Barney's respective searches into what magic still remained in the world. Dragging him back into active contact with magic against his will would be equally wrong.

"Jane--" Will began.

She cut him off. "I know your arguments by heart. I even agree with most of them -- if he wants to be ordinary now that he finally can, I'm happy for both of you. But he's still the Pendragon, and we need him. Nothing I tried worked to stop the time slips. You said the Wild Magic is out of your jurisdiction and you daren't push too hard and give the Dark a loophole back into Time, but Bran's not technically of the Light and if he could banish the afanc--"

"Time slips?" Will said sharply.

Jane paused and took an audible breath. "Right. From the beginning. We got to Wight a fortnight ago and met the crew from the Trust for Maritime Archaeology. Two days into the dig we turned up signs of a Mesolithic settlement in the Solent, right where last summer's work suggested it should be. Foundations, timber-covered fire pits, a few graves, what might be a primitive field, that sort of thing. We've left most of the evidence in situ for obvious reasons, but Professor Ives had me and Zainab haul up some antlers with interesting markings in a box sample, to see if they might be purposeful carvings rather than random accumulated damage."

"Sounds exciting," said Will.

"If you like scuba diving in vicious tidal murk, I suppose," Jane said. "But then things went peculiar. The sea keeps disappearing. We'll turn around and suddenly be in the middle of a broad valley with only a river where the shipping channel ought to be. At first it seemed dreamlike -- a mirage superimposed on what we all knew was really out there -- but that other time has been getting more and more solid, and the affected area is growing. Two nights ago somebody winged Professor Ives with an arrow and Zainab found it lying on the beach looking like it was knapped yesterday. And a pleasure yacht vanished into thin air last night as it sailed past the dig site."

"That should not be happening," said Will.

"Exactly," Jane said grimly. "But I don't know how to stop it. We put the antlers back where we found them. Zainab tried praying. I tried asking the Greenwitch and Tethys. Niall from the Trust did a few things his grandmother swore by to placate the Fair Folk. Nothing worked. But Bran's connected to the High Magic, which should still have some authority over the Wild Magic. Either you fix this yourself, or you bring him here to call his kingdom back to order."

She hung up before Will could respond.

\---------------

"Long day?" Bran asked when Will dropped his satchel on the mail table in their cramped Slough flat, and stood staring blankly toward the opposite wall where one of Barney's pictures hung: a watercolor landscape of an endless snowy forest that Bran had always found slightly unsettling but tolerated for Will's sake.

"Yes. And no," said Will. He shook himself all over, like a dog drying off or shedding a bad memory, and drifted into the kitchen. "Jane called the shop around one o'clock," he called over the sound of opening drawers and then things being shuffled about in the fridge.

Bran snorted, and scribbled his name at the bottom of yet another cover letter. "Oh, you too? I was out for lunch so she left a message, going on about time travel and the duty of kings, and here's me trying to finish a dozen job applications now the bloody PGCE is in my pocket. If she wants royal authority, she can call the queen in London. I do not have the time."

Nor did he have the inclination. He'd chosen this time and its mundane challenges as his reward, and it was frustrating that the rest of the world didn't seem to have accepted his decision.

Will made an odd sort of swallowed cough, and Bran turned on the couch to face the kitchen with a frown. " _Duw_ , what has got into you? If Jenny's stumbled into magic on her dig, it's from long before any Pendragon ever lived. What good would my father's name do against that?"

Will leaned against the kitchen doorframe, a half-eaten container of takeaway curry held loosely in his clever jeweler's fingers. "Your father's name? Not much. _Either_ father. Your own presence, on the other hand..."

There was always something strange about his face when he spoke as an Old One: a shadow altering the familiar planes of skin over bone, perhaps; some uncanny distance in his eyes that attracted and disquieted in equal measure.

Bran swallowed.

"I never wanted to push," Will said, dark hair falling into his eyes as he looked down and away from Bran's gaze. "I was willing to keep your memories from you because I assumed I knew what was best and didn't ever think to ask what you wanted. That was wrong, and I don't ever want to take away your choices again. I like this life we've built, though it's not what I pictured for either of us as children. I'll move to Wales if you get a teaching position there. But you are who you are, magically speaking, and that holds weight. Even for powers from before Britain dreamed itself into a separate land."

Bran stood from the couch and walked across the tiny room to Will's side. He ran one hand along Will's cheek, then tipped his face up until their eyes met once again.

"I am telling you, as I told you before, there is no guilt between us. You were not the one who chose to make me forget, and when Jane showed you the fault, you fixed it."

"Even so," said Will. "I'm sure I can sort these time slips out on my own. I'll head down to Wight tomorrow, be back Sunday evening. You'll hardly notice I'm gone."

"Ha very ha. As if I could avoid noticing an empty half of our bed," said Bran. "No, we'll go together, make a weekend of it. I doubt I will be any use, but if nothing else I can shout at the tide to stop coming in and give Jenny a good laugh. For now, either heat up that curry and share some with me or put it away before it starts growing mold in this weather."

The strangeness slipped away from Will's face as he smiled. "Thank you. I'll buy tickets to Portsmouth if you pack," he said, and leaned in for a kiss.

\---------------

"Took you long enough," Jane said when she unlocked the door of her temporary flat in Yarmouth and found Will and Bran sitting side by side on the sofa bickering over her field notes. They jerked their heads up, startled, and then Will smiled and Bran nodded as if granting her permission to approach.

For someone who claimed he was nothing special anymore, he did a terrible job of putting his money where his mouth was, Jane thought with wry fondness. It would probably work well for maintaining classroom order, though, and since that authority was why she needed him, she wasn't about to mock him for it. Much.

"We thought it would be best not to turn up at the dig itself uninvited," Will said as Jane crossed the front room and sank into a battered armchair.

"We also thought it would be sensible to get a better idea of your problem before charging in and waving mystical names about," Bran added as Jane unlaced her boots. "Lost lands are tricky business, as we all well know."

"I agree on both counts," Jane said. She slid her feet free, wiggled her toes in her sweat-damp socks, and sighed. "We've quit actual work for safety reasons, but we're keeping watch on the equipment and other stuff. I'll take you over in a couple hours and introduce you around. There should still be enough light to get a sense of the area and show you the residue of the box sample that I think started the whole mess, in case it has any magical clues."

"That will be useful," Will agreed.

Jane grinned at him. "A regular supernatural detective, that's what you are. You ought to go into business. But before we get to work, I want dinner," she continued. "There was another time slip around noon and while it's fascinating to see a herd of live aurochs and their calves, I could have done without running away from angry cows."

Bran laughed, short and a bit startled, as if he hadn't meant to.

"Not an experience I thought I'd share with any of you lot," he said in response to Jane's curious look. "Nor one I am looking to repeat, just for the record. Just as I'd prefer not to repeat some of the more hair-raising adventures of our youth. An archaeologist and a teacher will not be much use against magic, especially with our _dewin_ here forbidden to take action."

"I think you underestimate yourself," Will said, then smiled and raised his hand from Bran's thigh to fend off his boyfriend's annoyed attempt to ruffle his hair. "But anyway, dinner. Do you have anything worth cooking, Jane, or shall I go buy something from the chippy around the corner?"

Jane shrugged. "I have a stack of frozen meals in the freezer. Toss three in the oven and let's talk about how to rein in the Wild Magic before the whole island gets swallowed up by the past."

\---------------

"The thing about magic," Will said as he climbed out of Jane's car at the edge of the scrubby woodlands surrounding Bouldnor Battery, "is that it always has a purpose. Even the Wild Magic. So we need to figure out _why_ the time slips are happening as well as what's causing them. Then we need to decide whether we're willing to let the magic achieve its goal, or if we'd rather pay the price for breaking the spell."

"Thank you, Professor Stanton," Jane said, and elbowed him cheerfully in the side. "We don't need the lecture. We need you to do your spooky Old One thing and feel how far the effect is spreading."

Will sighed and closed his eyes. That wasn't strictly necessary, but it did serve as a useful signal to keep Bran or Jane from interrupting him while he woke the part of himself that was not and had never been human, and turned the full force of his attention on the ragged fabric of space and time.

"It's like circular waves," he said after a minute. "They flow out from a single point, then ebb back. The closer you are to the source, the longer and more complete the shift. Each temporal wave reaches a little farther. I can't be exact about previous ones, since they've mostly been overwritten, but the last one stopped about a kilometer behind us."

"And where is the source?" asked Jane.

Will opened his eyes. "That way," he said, and pointed toward the Solent. "About another half kilometer ahead and twenty-odd meters down."

"The dig itself, then, not the box sample. Bugger," Jane said with great feeling. "I don't think I can convince the professor and the Trust supervisor to let you borrow our scuba gear, and I've no other idea how we're meant to investigate things underwater."

"Perhaps a boat--" Will began, and then stopped as Bran pulled off his tinted glasses and folded them neatly into his pocket. Something in the set of his shoulders changed, and suddenly it didn't matter that he was wearing faded jeans and an old Led Zeppelin T-shirt, nor that he had no desire to rule anything more than a primary school classroom. He was a Pendragon, and when he asked, Britain would answer.

So would Will. Always.

Jane had been right to ask for his assistance.

"We won't need a boat," Bran said, turning to face Will and Jane. "Can't you feel it? Whoever or whatever is causing this mess knows we're here and wants to talk. All we need to do is wait for the next wave and step through."

"And when will that--" Jane began.

"Now," said Bran, and took their hands as the time slip crashed down.

**Author's Note:**

> In our world, underwater excavations at [Bouldnor Cliff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouldnor_Cliff) revealed an ancient forest as far back as 1987 but didn't discover evidence of Mesolithic settlements until 1999. I am taking the liberty of speeding that timeline up in the DIR world, since I assume Will, Bran, and Jane were 13 during _Silver on the Tree_ and I further assume that book took place somewhere between 1977 and 1979 -- both assumptions are based partly on internal series evidence and partly on publication dates -- which then places this fic somewhere between 1987 and 1991, when Jane is a graduate student in archaeology and Bran has completed college and a teacher training program.


End file.
